The following excerpt is from United States v. Valle, 807 F.3d 508 (2nd Cir. 2015):
searches on how to kidnap someone simply because he had a general interest in crime rather than criminal intent.2 See id. at 51920. These are perspectives on the evidence that the jury conceivably could have found persuasive but did not. It was the jury's sole prerogative to decide how to interpret the evidence presented, and the majority's notions of how the evidence should instead have been interpreted are incompatible with our obligation to respect the jury's fact-finding role by viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government and drawing all reasonable inferences in its favor. See United States v. Aguiar, 737 F.3d 251, 265 (2d Cir.2013) ("We agree that much of the evidence could be read to have an innocent meaning, but when the evidence raises two permissible inferences then we must resolve such conflicts in favor of the prosecution."), cert. denied, U.S. , 135 S.Ct. 400, 190 L.Ed.2d 290 (2014) ; United States v. Friedman, 998 F.2d 53, 56 (2d Cir.1993) (explaining that "[i]t is not for [the court] to weigh ... competing inferences and explanations" to ascertain "which explanation [of defendant's conduct] is more likely"); see also, e.g., United States v. Pavulak, 700 F.3d 651, 670 (3d Cir.2012) (rejecting defendant's contention that his requests to see a child naked were "facetious banter " and "fantasies," because it was not for the court "to weigh the evidence"), cert. denied, U.S. , 133 S.Ct. 2047, 185 L.Ed.2d 904 (2013) ; United States v. Dwinells, 508 F.3d 63, 74 (1st Cir.2007) (acknowledging that defendant's response to charges of attempted enticement of a minor"that he was merely role-playing and thought that the communications were mutually entertained fantasies"was "plausible" and "buttressed by [his] persistent dodging of suggestions that he and his correspondents meet," but concluding that "the government's theory of the case ... also was plausible," and that "[w]hen the record is fairly susceptible to two competing scenarios, the choice between those scenarios ordinarily is for the jury"), cert. denied, 554 U.S. 922, 128 S.Ct. 2961, 171 L.Ed.2d 892 (2008).
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